Observations and reflections from Tibor R. Machan, professor of business ethics and writer on general and political philosophy, now teaching at Chapman University in Orange, CA.

Saturday, September 23, 2006

Willie Nelson, Public Enemy?

by Tibor R. Machan

In the midst of the U. S. A. going nearly broke from the Iraq War,the War on Terror, and a rupturing corporate and personal welfarestate, I cannot imagine something much more pointless and wastefulthan the war on drugs. In my own neck of the woods several busts haveoccurred recently, bringing to "justice" cultivators of variouspatches of marijuana in various swanky neighborhoods, at huge cost tolaw enforcement organizations, which is to say, to the citizenry thatfunds them. But that is not really the worst of it.

Willie Nelson, the singer -- who looks to me to be about as harmlessa soul on the entertainment-celebrity roster as one can imagine --has recently been busted for having and using some pot on his tourbus. That, by all accounts, is the reality and the symbol of theworst aspects of this utterly insane undertaking, the war on drugs.

The man was doing no one any harm -- he could have been sipping abeer, chewing tobacco, or having a martini but, instead, his choiceof drugs was one that happens, quite irrationally, to seriouslyoffend influential elements of the voting public and politicians.This new prohibition is, of course, no more sensible, nor any more inaccord with principles of a just human community -- which is supposedto leave us free of out of control, offended meddlesome folks -- thanwas the previous nationwide prohibition of alcohol that finally hadto be scrapped because of the bona fide crime it spawned throughoutthe country. In the case of Mr. Nelson, though, there is somethingelse that this insane, immoral war illustrates.

American prisons are filled with such harmless drug offenders! I wasrecently visiting one of those, in Lompoc, California, and some 70%of the inmates are there for having been convicted of drug-relatedoffenses. Some are users, some are "pushers" or dealers, some areprobably more involved on the enforcement side of the industry(which, being illegal, cannot count on the official police to provideany remedy for the commercial malfeasance that plagues manyenterprises).

All this is happening in what President George W. Bush and his palsso proudly call a free country, indeed, as they would have it, theonly country on the face of the globe truly involved in spreadingliberty to all. What a crock that is and how hypocritical it mustcome off to most observant foreigners, including, sadly, the worst ofthem whose hatred of America and its professed system, a freecapitalist society, is very likely fed by it.

Also, since the U. S. A. has more prisoners than nearly any countryaround the world, and since that's something people tend to finddisturbing about a society, namely, its huge prison population --given that this suggests widespread serious criminal activity in theplace -- the proclamation by our leaders that we are a bastion ofliberty can only be most embarrassing and self-defeating.

Of course, free men and women can become criminals. No one shouldexpect a free society to be a utopia. Yet, it does reflect badly onthe U. S. A. to have so many of its citizens turn to crime. And whenlooked at without a careful consideration of what counts as crime inthe country, this bodes ill for the very idea of a free society --makes it look like freedom and crime go hand in hand. So the veryobjective that supposedly animates Bush & Co. in the Iraqi war --spreading freedom to the world's enslaved and oppressed -- can seemrather pointless and even counterproductive, given this associationof what is deemed a free society and the proclivity to crime by somany of its citizens.

Yet, of course, the crimes these citizens have a proclivity for arephony crimes -- it is as if eating hot dogs were a crime, or dancing,or watching professional sports on TV. No wonder the prisons are full-- prisoners occupy them who have been put there unjustly, withoutany good reason.

The statistics do not, of course, show this. But if one extrapolatesfrom the prison I visited to all the rest, it looks like the criminalelement in the country is but a fraction of those who are officiallydeemed to be criminals.

I do wish Willie Nelson could generate a revolution from his ownperfectly unjust and vile arrest on the charge of indulging in theuse of marijuana. We need this war on drugs ended, immediately. Maybethat would not only improve our reputation abroad but could divertthe misused monies funding it to something worthwhile -- for example,tax reduction.